This map features part of an icy village that looks like it’s been barricaded against invasion (see the crates in the upper left corner). The artwork is well done and exhibits Jonathan Roberts’s signature style. I am not really sure why the buildings are all the same color as the ground around them; perhaps the buildings, too, are made of ice? This map is tied to a Pathfinder adventure called “The Breaking of Forstor Nagar”; perhaps if I knew more about that adventure I’d understand the coloration or composition of the buildings. When you buy this product, you get both a fairly traditional PDF package and a file archive that includes customizable JPEG versions of the maps. It’s a great buy if your campaign will take its PCs to a place like the one depicted.

Over the Rooftops is a battlemap for The Breaking of Forstor Nagar adventure for Pathfinder. While it is designed for the adventure, it can be used outside of the adventure as it is designed generic enough for universal use. The city of Forstor Nagar is an ice-laden city carved into a glacier. With that in mind, the battlemap follows the frozen theme, almost to an overwhelming point.

The battlemap is a top-down view of part of the city with lots of tightly-packed buildings and little else in the way (which helps because you can then populate it as you see fit). The map is accompanied by add-on pieces to help add a little flavor to the map. The battlemap is drawn in color using a combination of white, grey shadows, and lots of shades of ice blue. LOTS of shades of ice blue. In addition, there is a black-and-white version of the map in the second half of the pack.

OVERALL

Before moving on, I’d like to say that I’m a really big fan of Jonathan Roberts’ cartography. I have seen many of his maps and they all look beautiful. This map, however, is my least favorite. While the quality of the product and its potential uses are high, I’m not a fan of the coloring and I’m especially not a fan of some of the details. My biggest complaint is what appears to be broken sections of some of the buildings. You can tell they are essentially ruins, but everything that was used to build these buildings is the same color as the frozen ground and the nearby glacier walls. Even if the materials are “frozen”, they should still exhibit some type of color other than just ice blue, appearing like building material. I also find the buildings to be too close and excessively blend together. Sometimes it’s tricky to find where one begins and another ends. I actually find the black-and-white version to be appealing.

RATINGS

Publication Quality: 10 out of 10
Regardless of my feelings for the coloring, Over the Rooftops is a wonderfully published product following the same high-standards in all Fantastic Maps products. The grid is perfectly laid over the battlemap and properly divided between the pages. In addition, it’s a real bonus to have an ink-saving black-and-white version.

Visual Appeal: 5 out of 10
My biggest complaint of Over the Rooftops is the coloring, primarily with the collapsed areas. I understand the purpose of the white, grey, and ice blue shades, but there should be some other coloring for the building materials. No that they should be turned into wood and made brown, but they could really use a different color to better define what they are and to make them stand out from the rest of the white, grey, and ice blue. I also think there should be better shading to define where one building ends and another begins as they all look a bit jumbled.

Desire to Use: 8 out of 10
Obviously Over the Rooftops has a defined use within The Breaking of Forstor Nagar. However, using the black-and-white version, you can use it for any fantasy city, especially if it’s carved into a mountain or glacier. It’s also a great feature that the battlemap is generic enough to be used in a number of ways.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Over the Rooftops is a good battlemap, although the color version is somewhat limited in its use. The black-and-white version has definite uses outside of the adventure. It is a great depiction of a tightly-packed fantasy or historical city and obviously ideal for those running the adventure. I also really like how some of the buildings are actually carved into the glacier as it gives the battlemap some interesting flavor.

Rating:

[4 of 5 Stars!]

Publisher Reply:

Aaron - thanks for the excellent review. In the adventure the buildings themselves are actually constructed from ice, shaped and molded into the ice buildings in the map. So there's a reason for the ubiquitous ice blue. I accept that limits the use outside the scope of the Breaking of Forstor Nagar - and I'm really pleased you like the wider use of the black and white version! Good call on the jumbled nature of the buildings, I'll take that into account when I do more city maps.
Thanks for taking the time for such a comprehensive and well thought out review! I really appreciate it.
Jon Roberts
Fantastic Maps

First, we get a one-page overview of the map, complete with grids. 36 pages are devoted to each of the 2 blown-up versions of the map that can be used with miniatures. Both blown-up version, i.e. the full-color and b/w-one come with grids to facilitate placing the miniatures.

Following the tradition of the line, we also get a lot of additional content: 3 high-res jpegs, one with items and grid, one without grid and one without items and grid. Additionally we get 5 pngs, one of which is a indicator for target areas, a maptool file of the map as well as an alternate 63-page version of the pdf for the DINA4-format, ensuring that Europeans also get to enjoy the quality of this map.

Conclusion:
The pdfs all come with bookmarks, thus facilitating the use of the maps. The map itself is GORGEOUS, as we've come to expect of Jonathan Robert's quality work. HOWEVER, there is something I feel I need to address and it pains me to do so. Usability of this map is rather limited. This map originally appeared in Ben McFarland's stellar Breaking of Forstor Nagar, which is set in a city built into a glacier and subsequently, all the buildings are a shade of blue in the color-version. Unfortunately, no alternate color-scheme has been provided and thus the blue buildings might irk some people. While I still consider the map to be stellar and would recommend it to run Breaking of Forstor Nagar, I also feel that an alternate color-scheme would have gone a long way to endear this map to the public. My final verdict has to take these concerns into account and thus is 3 stars. UNLESS you want to use it for BoFN or a similar blue-tinged city, in which case you should consider this 5 stars.

This product is 75 pages long. It starts with a cover and introduction. (2 pages)

Maps (73 page)
This is a single map of a ice city streets and rooftops of buildings. You then get blown up sections of the map to print out in both color and gray scale to use with mini's. There is also a map pack zip file with a host of other versions of the same maps, for different sized paper etc.

Closing thoughts. There is no art, there really isn't any layout or editing since it is just a collection of maps to be used with mini's as it's prime purpose. For that purpose it works very well giving you a wide variety of ways to use the product as you see fit. With no else much I can say about the product I am going to close and give it a 5 star review. The maps are pretty and well done and they do exactly what they claim to do.